It's not about that. It's about profit at the end of the fiscal year. These days, if a company doesn't see improved growth consistently, the management gets fired. Big players will do whatever is required to keep those numbers up and keep drawing that big salary.

mwfark:If you want to earn more monet, then get a better job than flipping burgers. It is meant to be an entry-level position, not to support a family. Other people do not owe you anything, much less a government-mandated minimum wage. It's this lazy sense of entitlement that is killing this country.

Starting pay at In-n Out is $10 /hr and you know what they get for that? Ridiculously polite, literate staff and a drive through line that wraps around the block. Now is some of that attributed to better hamburgers than McDonalds? Sure, but their fries suck balls and there is nothing else on the menu. Prices are roughly the same and somehow In n Out is able to pay their employees more. Their employees treat the customers better which helps drive sales.

ferretman:FTA: "In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its <a data-cke-saved-href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/04/news/companies/mc donalds_jobs/index.ht m" target="_hplink">more than 500,000 U.S. employees."

Yes...there are no other costs besides employee pay and benefits. What the student hasn't taken into account, if minimum wage was doubled, the rising costs associated with the suppliers, the ones who manufacture the beef patties, chicken nuggets, soda syrup, shake mix, french fries, fish sandwiches, packaging suppliers, etc. These are all manufactured by other companies under contract to, in this case, McDonalds and are typically union-shops (at least on the east coast). If everyone's wages increase the product cost will increase and there will be less jobs.

First of all, the article isn't talking about doubling the minimum wage. It's talking about doubling the wage of every McDonalds employee, including the CEO. There should be no other change in operating cost.

Second, I was under the impression that fast food jobs were for high school kids to make some spare money, not for adults looking to raise and support a family. Unless you're management or higher, McD's isn't supposed to be a career.

So how much would it cost them to replace McDonald's employees with a touchscreen kiosk and a robotic arm? Because that shiat would get my order right and leave it in the fryer for the appropriate length of time.

The world needs ditch diggers too. Should McDonalds workers be paid more than the min. wage? That's a debate worth having. Should they be paid twice that? No. Want to make more than that and work at McDonalds? Start at min. wage and work your way up through shift supervisor to mgmt. Don't like it? Too farking bad. That's the way the world works. And I don't want to try one of your stupid apple pies today either.

A lot of people need to admit that $15/hour is scarily close to what they make for their "skilled" labor and don't want to see this ever come to fruition since it eliminates their feeling of superiority over the "poors".

A 17% price increase is still a pretty damned high cost increase, and considering it's linked from the Huffington Post it's probably on the low side too.

Besides, most of the produce that went into that Big Mac was probably earned by migrant workers who work harder and earn even less. But it's okay, because they take the jobs that no Americans no longer want to do.

McDonalds (like any business) pays what it pays. If it's not enough, leave.

Corporations will try to pay the absolute minimum that they can. The solution is for the government to raise that legal minimum. A high national minimum wage will leave McDonalds, Wal-Mart, etc, with no choice but to pay more.

Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom:But what if the increased cost resulted in a decrease in demand and thus lower sales? They may be able to pay employees more, but they'd have to cut costs somewhere else.

A decrease in demand would compel them to look at if lowering prices would raise more revenue. If they're compelled to pay a livable wage they can look at raising prices to compensate and maintaining their original profit margin on lower volume, or lowering the profit margin and increasing volume. They may still lose some profits overall, but I won't lose any sleep over lower executive bonuses or shareholder profits.

Weaver95:

The employees should be welcome to try to form a union, and their employer should be free to fire them for beginning to organize. What's the problem again?

They should be free to start a union, but companies should be prevented by law from firing employees for attempts to unionize.

Deep Contact:They should have 3 scales for min. wage based on age.15 to 17 would be $3/hr17 to 21 would be $7/hr21+ would be $15/hrNow go do the math.

If that were the case and I was an evil corporate entity, I'd hire 16 year olds to man the registers, 18 year olds to cook the food (because there are things a 16 year old can't legally do in a kitchen), and then give everyone a bad performance review for their 20th birthday and a pink slip for their 21st.

/Actually, I'd annoy them into quitting by cutting their hours and screwing with their shifts and giving them crappier jobs than normal if they got close to 21. It's less paperwork if an employee quits.

Tax the fark out of churches, and war tool manufacturers, while you are at it.

You want to proselytize my congress critter? It's going to take a whole lot more quarters in the collection plate.You want 12 kids? Pay for them.You want a new bomber? Good, then add a tax to the munitions makers.

Stop subsidizing people who do harm to society, and give me a break.And get off my lawn.

You can't just throw money at this problem. It's the same issue with getting good teachers, or getting people for a police force that want to serve the people. Finding a dedicated Big Mac crafter is a delicate balance. You don't want people just taking the job because the money is good. You need people with heart.

Weaver95:Debeo Summa Credo:Again, when you start your business, pay the CEO no more than he's worth. With paying only fair wages to everyone, you should be able to offer a quality product at a fair price, crushing the inefficient corporations who waste all their money on executive pay.

are you familiar with how Costco is run? you might find it interesting to see how their CEO runs the business, find out how his company stacks up against WalMart.

You don't own McDonald's. It's none of your farking business what they decide to offer in wages or salary to ANY of their workers.

It bothers you that I question your false and unsupported assumptions doesn't it? interesting indeed to observe....

Are you familiar with how McDonald's and Walmart are run? They are tremendously successful businesses, operating in a low cost structre.

Costco has decided to occupy a niche where higher quality employees can provide better service to customers. Good for them.

There are many introductory economics textbooks that can help you. Some are available from public libraries, if you are short of cash.

Pray 4 Mojo:/If you work at Mcdonalds in an attempt to support anyone other than yourself, at some point, you failed at life.

It doesn't matter how marginal a job at McDonald's is colloquially, in reality it's where half a million Americans eat and work. They call the job a "job" and the meal a "meal". If the job or meal isn't legitimate, they shouldn't be allowed to call it that.

CaliNJGuy:The world needs ditch diggers too. Should McDonalds workers be paid more than the min. wage? That's a debate worth having. Should they be paid twice that? No. Want to make more than that and work at McDonalds? Start at min. wage and work your way up through shift supervisor to mgmt. Don't like it? Too farking bad. That's the way the world works. And I don't want to try one of your stupid apple pies today either.

An alternate way of looking at this would be that they would have more bargaining power if they actually had skills that gave them other viable options. In other words, it's an education problem.

Until you do something about the teeming horde of replacements who also have no hope of earning more anywhere else, this will never work. They'll just slave-drive the poor bastards twice as hard and hire half as many, knowing they have nowhere else to go.

TuteTibiImperes:More people earning more money will allow them to spend more in their local economies supporting other businesses that will then earn more profits and be able to expand hiring more employees and creating more jobs.

Weaver95:Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom: But what if the increased cost resulted in a decrease in demand and thus lower sales? They may be able to pay employees more, but they'd have to cut costs somewhere else.

well, given that your average CEO makes 400% more than they're worth....you could start there.

How about $15 minimum over the supply chain?The minimum wage in Australia is about $15/hr and a big mac meal costs about $8.15 for a medium (small drink, small fries in US). The version of Burger King won't give you much for $9 and KFC lunch box (chicken sandwich or two pieces, fries, small mashed potato and a can of soft drink) is $10 even.

Full Metal Retard:There is no need to raise pay unless you are unable to find workers.

The world does not magically owe lazy fark ups $500,000 a year.

And I doubt the magical number too. It's just a number invented by some politically correct brainwashed student who has never run a business.

$15 an hour x 40 hours per week by 50 working weeks per year (assume two weeks vacation) is $30,000. Not a princely sum by any means, but at least enough to support yourself in most of the country without welfare programs.

Do you think someone has a GED from high school, wears his pants at the bottom of his ass, and really really sucks at math... do you think they are worth $15/hour?

The reason you are paid minimum wage is because you are more than likely a person who always achieved the minimum in life. Grades/savings/common sense. I'd be willing to bet a sizeable sum that even if you put all that extra money into the hands of "those people" they wouldn't know to handle is properly. They wouldn't pay off their credit cards, or student loans, it would be spent on dumb crap that dumb people like to buy. Rims, booze, cigarettes, partying, eating out, a new car you (still) really can't afford.

In case you haven't noticed -- increasing the minimum wage does nothing in the long run to give anyone a better life.

I don't think people realize that, someday down the road (probably on the order of decades, but who knows), CONservative policies are going to end up getting a lot of people lined up on the wall and shot.

Some of those people probably deserve it, but it's a direction nobody wants to go in the long run. CONservatives must be okay with the eventual communist revolution that our country is headed towards.

ArkAngel:gilgigamesh: ferretman: FTA: "In other words, for every dollar McDonald's earns, a little more than 17 cents goes toward the income and benefits of its <a data-cke-saved-href="http://money.cnn.com/2011/04/04/news/companies/mc donalds_jobs/index.ht m" target="_hplink">more than 500,000 U.S. employees."

Yes...there are no other costs besides employee pay and benefits. What the student hasn't taken into account, if minimum wage was doubled, the rising costs associated with the suppliers, the ones who manufacture the beef patties, chicken nuggets, soda syrup, shake mix, french fries, fish sandwiches, packaging suppliers, etc. These are all manufactured by other companies under contract to, in this case, McDonalds and are typically union-shops (at least on the east coast). If everyone's wages increase the product cost will increase and there will be less jobs.

If the suppliers etc are union shops and their members are only making minimum wage, those are officially the worst unions ever.

But if the people working in the factories are making the same $15/hr minimum wage that the McJobbers are, they're gonna revolt.

Yeah, thats the problem, unless you work in a Union shop where you get raises when min wage goes up you still make the same but everything else costs more because min wage went up.

The jobs that make 15/hr now with 7.25 min wage where making 15 /hr like 20 years ago when min wage was 4.25.

15/ hr with 7.25 min wage will buy about what 9/hr would when min was 4.25.

McDonalds has an unjustified bad reputation. The McJobs thing is simply stupid. My wife works for McDonalds in the UK as front of counter staff and earns significantly more than minimum wage after being there for only 6 months. They have placed her on an education programme and she has complete flexible hours, The only annoyance for us is their insistence that she completes the adult literacy and numeracy training as she gained her degree over 10 years ago so they do not count it as "recent". I can see why they do it, but on a personal level it is annoying.

To be honest earnings are based on supply and demand, when the supply outstrips the demand, remuneration drops. Exactly as happened in a lot of high tech industries when India, China, Vietnam and so on created the offshoring market.

McDonalds may not pay the best wages in the world, but they don't pay the worst in the western world either, and they do spend a lot of time and money on training and developing staff in skills that are transferable away from the food service industry.

DON.MAC:How about $15 minimum over the supply chain?The minimum wage in Australia is about $15/hr and a big mac meal costs about $8.15 for a medium (small drink, small fries in US). The version of Burger King won't give you much for $9 and KFC lunch box (chicken sandwich or two pieces, fries, small mashed potato and a can of soft drink) is $10 even.

It's as if purchasing power floats freely and isn't tied to any particular arbitrary number of currency.

taoistlumberjak:I don't think people realize that, someday down the road (probably on the order of decades, but who knows), CONservative policies are going to end up getting a lot of people lined up on the wall and shot.

Some of those people probably deserve it, but it's a direction nobody wants to go in the long run. CONservatives must be okay with the eventual communist revolution that our country is headed towards.

taoistlumberjak:I don't think people realize that, someday down the road (probably on the order of decades, but who knows), CONservative policies are going to end up getting a lot of people lined up on the wall and shot.

Some of those people probably deserve it, but it's a direction nobody wants to go in the long run. CONservatives must be okay with the eventual communist revolution that our country is headed towards.

BgJonson79:Weaver95: Dow Jones and the Temple of Doom: But what if the increased cost resulted in a decrease in demand and thus lower sales? They may be able to pay employees more, but they'd have to cut costs somewhere else.

well, given that your average CEO makes 400% more than they're worth....you could start there.

Who decides what a CEO is worth?

well, basically the CEO stacks the board of directors with his buddies, then tells them that he will give them raises if they make sure he gets a ton of money. then they vote themselves a ton of money, fire half their workers and move their core business production overseas to take advantage of chinese slave labor and zero environmental protection laws. sure, they end up with a crappy product and the chinese steal their proprietary manufacturing data but f*ck dude, they're making OODLES of cash!

7th Son of a 7th Son:basemetal: new study provided to The Huffington Post by a University of Kansas student.

So says a student.

A KU student at that. Equivalent to 3rd grade everywhere else.

You know, it's rare that I call out someone like this, but your outright slander of the intellect of the third-grade community... it's... it's just uncalled for. These third-graders are a good, proud people who have enriched the lives of millions... and here you are, comparing these good individuals to such dastardly and uneducated scum as KU student.